Does anyone know if/how the desktop icons selection appearance can be changed? Currently, in Windows 8, it appears as a semi-transparent square around the icon (as opposed to just the outline of the icon in Windows 7 and before);

Would prefer to bring the back to the pre-Win8 look. I tried a few changes in the registry but had no luck.

AFAIK, this style of the selection rectangle is around since Windows Vista. Can you post a screenshot of how on your Windows 7 the selection rectangle is? Or are you using the Classic theme on Windows 7, in which case, it might be a dotted rectangle. Unfortunately, the Classic theme is removed in Windows 8.

Yeah classic look. I know it's no longer available in Win8 but was wondering if there was a workaround to altering the way icons look when selected (yeah, I know it's a small detail). This is how it looks on XP/Win7:

i thought on 7 it looked similar to 8 trish; are you sure that pic can be mimiced on 7. because windows 7 allows for transparency in icons, its hard for the system to determine exactly what areas to color blue, whereas in xp without transparency you could just throw a blue rectangle the same size as the icons to shade it.. so this particular feature would require coding, and not just modifying a theme..its possible a program can do this, but i havn't heard of one...

i thought on 7 it looked similar to 8 trish; are you sure that pic can be mimiced on 7. because windows 7 allows for transparency in icons, its hard for the system to determine exactly what areas to color blue, whereas in xp without transparency you could just throw a blue rectangle the same size as the icons to shade it.. so this particular feature would require coding, and not just modifying a theme..its possible a program can do this, but i havn't heard of one...

That screenshot is most definitely from my Windows 7 laptop. Don't think I have a third-party program responsible for it either. I also asked my husband (also running Win7) and he says his icons are also selected this way and not with squares.

I thought maybe it had to do something with the "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" options in the Performance Options in Win7 (MIA in Win8), but the registry key associated with it is still there and set to 1.

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